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celebrate me hone

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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4

I had a little time this morning before I left for church and I began reading the new issue of Harpers that arrived over the weekend. What caught my eye was a full page ad of new books from Harvard University Press, and, in particular, one title: Loneliness as a Way of Life by Thomas Dumm. The resonance of the title sent me looking for more about both the book and author, and I found this:

“What does it mean to be lonely?” Thomas Dumm asks. His inquiry, documented in this book, takes us beyond social circumstances and into the deeper forces that shape our very existence as modern individuals. The modern individual, Dumm suggests, is fundamentally a lonely self. Through reflections on philosophy, political theory, literature, and tragic drama, he proceeds to illuminate a hidden dimension of the human condition. His book shows how loneliness shapes the contemporary division between public and private, our inability to live with each other honestly and in comity, the estranged forms that our intimate relationships assume, and the weakness of our common bonds.

A reading of the relationship between Cordelia and her father in Shakespeare’s King Lear points to the most basic dynamic of modern loneliness—how it is a response to the problem of the “missing mother.” Dumm goes on to explore the most important dimensions of lonely experience—Being, Having, Loving, and Grieving. As the book unfolds, he juxtaposes new interpretations of iconic cultural texts—Moby-Dick, Death of a Salesman, the film Paris, Texas, Emerson’s “Experience,” to name a few—with his own experiences of loneliness, as a son, as a father, and as a grieving husband and widower.

Written with deceptive simplicity, Loneliness as a Way of Life is something rare—an intellectual study that is passionately personal. It challenges us, not to overcome our loneliness, but to learn how to re-inhabit it in a better way. To fail to do so, this book reveals, will only intensify the power that it holds over us.

But I need to back up for a minute. The journey my thoughts took today began yesterday when Choralgirl mentioned the movie Home for the Holidays in her post, which is one of our must-see-again movies during the holidays. Which is to say, I’ve been thinking about home. Seeing the book title this morning just pushed me farther down the road.

I got to church a little early, so I went into our newly renovated church library and, after a little browsing, picked up Frederick Buechner’s The Longing for Home (big surprise), a book I read many years ago but didn’t retain. Something about the days growing colder pulls me to Buechner. The mention of King Lear in the description of Dumm’s book was also a connector. The first Buechner book I ever read was Telling the Truth: The Gospel, as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, in which he referenced one particular line from Lear:

The weight of these sad times we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

Those words have never let go of me. At the risk of being overly quoteful, I want to pass along the words that grabbed me before I went into worship this morning.

In a novel called Treasure Hunt, which I wrote some years ago, there is a scene of homecoming. The narrator, a young man named Antonio Parr, has been away for some weeks and on his return finds that his small son and some other children have made a sign for him that reads WELCOME HONE with the last little leg of the m in home missing so that it turns it into a n. “It seemed oddly fitting,” Antonio Parr says when he first sees it. “It was good to get home, but it was home with something missing or out of whack about it. It wasn’t much, to be sure, just some minor stroke or serif, but even a minor stroke can make a major difference.” And then a little while later he remembers it a second time and goes on to add, “WELCOME HONE, the sign said, and I can’t help thinking again of Gideon and Barak, of Samson and David and all the rest of the crowd . . . who, because some small but crucial thing was missing, kept looking for it come hell or high water wherever they went till their eyes were dim and their arches fallen . . .In the long run I suppose it would be to think of everybody if you knew enough about them to think straight.” (17)

Buechner goes on to say Parr was referencing Hebrews 11:13, 14:

These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth, for people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.

Strangers and exiles: those acquainted with loneliness; those who are always headed for, looking for, longing for home.

November, for me, is the clubhouse turn towards home. Thanksgiving means I go on a pie-baking binge and hand them out to the neighbors, wherever our neighborhood has been, and that we do our best to fill our table with those who need to be at home for the holidays. We don’t have our final count for this year, but the table is filling up. Thanksgiving is also the precursor for Advent, the season of longing that takes us home for the holidays in a more permanent sense. Though I’ve still got a couple of weeks, something about the words that found me let me know I’m heading home a little earlier than usual.

Bewteen Buechner and the boys holding up the misspelled sign, I found myself humming a homecoming song I haven’t thought about in awhile, but gives soundtrack to my feelings today.

please celebrate me home
give me a number
please celebrate me home
play me one more song
I can always remember
and I can recall whenever
I find myself too all alone
I can sing me home

From Dumm to Buechner to Loggins and all of us in between, home is the place we long for and look for and occasionally stumble into. The address is often elusive, but we know it by the smells or the tastes or the melodies or the faces looking back at us when we walk in. And, if the song were playing, everyone from Samson and David to King Lear and Cordelia to Antoine Parr might sing:

well, I’m finally here
but I’m bound to roam
come on, celebrate me home

Yes. Please. Celebrate me hone.

Peace,
Milton

comedy is empathy

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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5

Ginger and I agree on most things in life, but one of the places where we differ is our disparate opinions of The Office. She can’t stand it and it cracks me up. I’m late to the show, actually, catching up these days with through cable reruns and well aware that the original British version is probably even funnier. I thought about the show today because I heard part of an NPR interview with Ricky Gervais, the creator of both series and the star of the British version. I stepped out between two catering gigs to grab a cup of coffee and a shot of thoughtfulness thrown in for free.

Gervais has just finished a US stand up tour and was promoting an HBO special that is coming up. In the part of the interview I got to hear, he was talking a bit more philosophically about what comedy means and where it comes from. I’m fortunate that npr.org has a transcript of the part of the interview that I heard:

“America is my mecca for entertainment. Everything I have ever loved has come out of America,” Gervais says. Those comics “taught me that you have to be at the bottom rung of the ladder. No one wants to see unfeasibly handsome, clever people doing things brilliantly; they want to see a putz struggling and falling over, and the important thing is getting back up again.”

Gervais insists there is no place for a peacock in comedy. He says it’s all about being the everyman and maintaining a fallible persona that people can relate to. “There should be no machismo in a comedian because comedy is about empathy,” he says. “I think the audience doesn’t need to be told that your life is better than theirs.”

In Out of England, Gervais comes onstage with a king’s crown and a rock star’s pomp, accompanied by fireworks and Queen’s “One World, One Vision.” His ostentatious entrance is a tongue-in-cheek jab at production values and the idea of celebrity.

“Soon you find out that all my anecdotes of fame are about me being the underdog, me being embarrassed socially, depressed, everyone getting the better of me,” he says.

Gervais says returning to stand-up has allowed him to discover the importance of physical comedy. He realized “what people liked was me acting out a scenario as opposed to just telling jokes,” he says. “Because comedy is empathy, most of the things we identify with are probably nonverbal. Body language and the way that you feel things are are more important than what you hear.”

Comedy is empathy. He said it twice. Comedy is empathy.

One of my favorite movies is an offbeat little comedy that was one of Luke and Owen Wilson’s first films: Bottle Rocket. The tag line to the movie was, They’re not really criminals, but everybody’s got to have a dream.” Owen plays Dignan, a lovable goof who thinks his seventy-five year plan to criminal success is the key to life. Luke plays his friend Andrew who has just been released from a psychiatric hospital. Dignan sees his plan as salvation for them both and begins to put together a team. In the scene below, he’s interviewing Bob for the position of getaway driver.

“That’s good. That’s good. ‘Cause it hits me right there.” Empathy.

In another one of my favorite movies, Dead Poets Society, Mr. Keating (Robin Williams) says to one of his students, “We’re not laughing at you; we’re laughing near you.” Comedy is empathy.

Empathy is identifying with the feelings and actions of someone else so much, as one dictionary put it, that when the batter swings the bat your muscles tense. It is identification, connectedness. The comic is not saying, “You’re like me,” but rather, “This is what it feels like to be in your skin.” Comedy is incarnational.

I loved what he said and I thought about it as I was helping to prepare dinner tonight for a roomful of people I didn’t even see. I ran through several comedians in my mind and soon realized Gervais was not describing all of the comedy there is, but what he saw as comedy at its best. He was making a bold statement in a world filled with biting and cynical satire where comedy is mostly target practice. He was offering a powerful and gentle alternative.

Though his words sent me thinking more metaphorically about comedy, particularly related to faith – Jesus as the original stand up comic – I wanted to pass along what I heard because it’s worth regarding someone who takes the time to think about what they do, about what they mean, and then moves to embody those thoughts with intentionality.

That’s good. That’s good. ‘Cause it hits me right there.

Peace,
Milton

a story for christmas

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1

Several years ago, Ginger asked me to write a story for Christmas Eve. What came out of me was a Dr. Suess-ish sort of tale that has found a life in many places on Christmas Eves since. The story begins this way:

As we gather together on this Silent Night,
To sing ‘round the tree in the soft candlelight,

From a Faraway Christmas, from time that’s grown cold,
Comes a story, you see, that has seldom been told.

Of all of the legends, the best and the worst,
From Christmases all the way back to the first,

This little tale isn’t often remembered
From then until now, down through all those Decembers.

But I found an old copy tucked away on a shelf,
And I turned through the pages, and I thought to myself,

Of all of the times between now and then,
This is the Christmas to hear it again.

This year, you can hear the story in a different way — on audio CD. My friend Terry Allebaugh added a wonderful harmonica soundtrack, my friend Claudia Fulshaw created beautiful artwork for the cover and the insert, and I read the story and added a couple of other touches. I’m proud of what we did and excited to share it.

In the sidebar to the left is the PayPal button that will make your purchase possible. The CD is $10.00, plus $2.00 for shipping. If your order is over $50.00, shipping is free. (That’s in the U.S.) I will sign, seal, and deliver (or at least mail) the CDs myself.

Entrepreneurship is not my gift. I’m grateful to Gordon Atkinson for his encouragement and technical advice, to Claudia and Terry, and to Ginger for calling the story out of me in the first place.

The story runs on several different levels and is appropriate for most any age. I hope you enjoy it.

Peace,
Milton

a quick update

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3

I talked to my dad this morning as I was going into work. They had just taken my mother into surgery and we were getting ready for a long day of waiting. I did not expect to hear from him until at least four o’clock. Two and a half hours later, he called to say the surgeons found things much less complicated than they expected and they were finished. Mom was already in recovery. Dad called tonight to say she is in a step down room from the ICU and is expected to go home on Monday or Tuesday.

I am grateful.

Peace,
Milton

god is for us

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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5

Sometimes life drifts apart; sometimes it comes together.

Within the last week, several members of my former youth group in Texas found me via Facebook. I still haven’t figured out how to navigate that rather formidable universe, but I am enjoying finding old friends. One of the things we shared in our years together were the songs my friend Billy Crockett and I wrote for youth camp each summer. One chorus didn’t require much work lyrically, on our part, but came together quite well:

God is for us who can be against us
God is for us we are not alone
God is for us we are for each other
hallelujah he is for us

Some years later, Billy was thinking about recording the song (which he did on the CD Red Bird Blue Sky) and decided we needed to write verses. At the time, my father had a serious case of pneumonia and I was really worried about him. And the verses we wrote carried both that concern and the hope that carried us. When we finished, the whole song looked like this:

God is for us who can be against us
God is for us we are not alone
God is for us we are for each other
Hallelujah he is for us

for all the damage done
still won’t turn and run
hearts have been broken
dreams have been stolen
but nothing takes these words away

God is for us who can be against us
God is for us we are not alone
God is for us we are for each other
Hallelujah he is for us

the places that we go
so many different roads
no present danger
no distant future
will take us where we cannot know

God is for us who can be against us
God is for us we are not alone
God is for us we are for each other
Hallelujah he is for us

Tonight I talked to my mother as I walked to my car after work. She had had a hard day and sounded worn out. Her surgery is at nine o’clock tomorrow morning and is expected to take most of the day. Like so many years ago, I am concerned and feeling the distance between us. Tonight, pieces of my past came back together to remind me of what I know is true underneath the uncertainty.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — I tried, unsuccessfully, to figure out how to imbed an audio file so you could hear the song. If anyone knows how to do that on Blogger, please let me know.

thank you, mama africa

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3

I turned one year old on a ship sailing across the Atlantic Ocean for Africa.

My parents were going to be missionaries in Southern Rhodesia and I was along for the ride. In 1957, the only way to get from Texas to Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia was by ship, and then car. We were thirty-two days at sea, leaving New York harbor and stopping only once on the island of St. Helena before docking in Beira, Mozambique. Somewhere in the open water I celebrated my first birthday.

The first task of a missionary in those days was language school. Sindabele was the native tongue (one of the Bantu languages) and my parents were told that the first six weeks of their new life would involve nothing but language classes. They hired a woman named Salina to stay with me while they went about their lessons. One of the favorites stories my father tells is getting one of their first vocabulary lists and finding the word “isikwapa” and it’s translation: armpit. My father was livid and said, “I came halfway around the world to tell people about Jesus and the first word you teach me is armpit!”

Fifty years on, it’s the only Sindabele word any of my family remembers.

Sindabele is one of the “click languages,” meaning there are actual clicking sounds connected to the consonants. You don’t just say the letter, you pop your tongue in one of several ways to make the sound. As a little one, who learned the language faster from Salina than my parents did at school, I couldn’t say the word and the click, I would do one and then the other. No wonder I was fascinated when Miriam Makeba recorded “The Click Song” just a couple of years later.

I tell that story because Miriam Makeba died today at 76. Beyond “The Click Song,” the woman known as “Mama Africa” was one of those voices of freedom that has resonance across generations. She is South African who lived through apartheid and saw her Nelson Mandela become president. She died after singing a concert in Italy in support of another artist taking a stand for what matters. She had a long and full life, far beyond what I knew about it. I didn’t follow her career or know too much more of her music than the song that captured me as a child. And that connection is enough to stop, take notice, and give thanks she sang as she did.

Peace,
Milton

all good gifts

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3

One of the things I love about our church is there is always a certain level of improvisation, particularly when it comes to worship. Our worship is well planned and very intentional and, like good improv, Ginger often uses what we have prepared and the talents she knows we have to offer and calls us to step into the moment, often in that moment. So it was, when I got to church this morning – about ten minutes before the service began – that James, our wonderful music minister, was walking down the hall saying, “Milton, I know you’re here. We need you for the introit.”

He found me. We practiced. Ten minutes later I was standing at the front of the church and singing

we plow the fields and scatter
the good seed on the land
but it is fed and watered
by God’s almighty hand
he sends the snow in winter
the warmth to swell the grain
the springtime and the sunshine
the cold refreshing rain
all good gifts around us
are sent from heaven above
so thank the Lord, yes thank the Lord
for all his love

I went to church this morning with a lot on my heart. My mother is having surgery on Wednesday and, without telling a story that is more hers than mine to tell, it’s a big deal. I went to church this morning, more than anything else, to ask my fellow Pilgrims to pray with me. Even though I live with the pastor, I had no idea what hymns she had chosen, but here is how they went down. After the introit and our call to worship we sang another favorite of mine, “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” My heart hung on these words:

summer and winter and springtime and harvest
sun moon and stars in their courses above
join with all nature in manifold witness
to thy great faithfulness mercy and love
great is thy faithfulness great is thy faithfulness
morning by morning new mercies I see
all I have needed thy hand hath provided
great is thy faithfulness Lord unto me

Our prayer time soon followed. I told my church family what was happening in my family and asked for prayers for my mother. Others lifted up their joys and concerns, which included celebrating a ninetieth birthday with one of our dear ones, and then, as has become our custom, we sat quietly at the end of Ginger’s prayer and listened to the choral response, which begins with a piano instrumental until the voices finish the verse of another favorite hymn:

here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it
seal it for thy courts above.

After the children’s time, we sent them off to Sunday School singing

we are walking in the light of God
we are walking in the light of God
we are walking, we are walking
we are walking in the light of God.

When Ella was first learning to walk on a leash, she responded with a combination of distraction and determination to not go quietly down the street. In her one year of life (her birthday was November 4), she has chewed through five – count them, five – lifetime warranty leashes. One day, amidst the frustration of our endeavor, I decided I would see if singing might make a difference, and I began singing the same chorus we sang to send off the children, with one small change:

Ella’s walking Ella’s walking
Ella’s walking in the light of God . . .

As soon as she heard the song, she began trotting down the street and continues to do so even now. Something about the light keeps her moving. As I listened and sang this morning, I found the same is true for me.

After church and coffee hour, we had our monthly deacons’ meeting and, since it’s November, the budget was part of the agenda. As I’m sure is true in many churches, the discussion was colored by the present state of the economy, which pulled us too quickly to being distracted by all we think we can’t do rather than who we believe God is calling us to be in the year ahead. Though we didn’t sing to get ourselves back in the light, we did talk our way there. We will need to keep talking and remembering if we are to live into the words that were our closing hymn today:

not alone we conquer, not alone we fall
in each loss or triumph, lose or triumph all
bound by God’s far purpose in one living whole
move we on together to the shining goal
forward through the ages in unbroken line
move the faithful spirits at the call divine.

One of the reasons I love the last hymn is it takes the tune of “Onward Christian Soldiers” so we can sing about something other than war, which is not a metaphor for faith that does much for me. I’m not looking for a fight. I am looking to be reminded of what I know is true: whatever circumstances life presents, Love is the Last Word. When I remember who I am and Whose I am, as the old saying goes, I can also remember the best response to that kind of Love is gratitude.

Thank the Lord, yes thank the Lord for all the love.

Now I’m going to sing myself to sleep.

Peace,
Milton

autumn leaves

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2

When I got to the front yard, my neighbor had
just finished raking the leaves. Our property line
was well delineated: no leaves on his lawn,
leaves on mine. He has chosen to participate in
fall’s festival of futility in ways I have not. I’m
waiting for a good stiff breeze to blow them
all down the block to belong to someone else.

The leaves are more singular in their task than I;
all they have to do at this point is let go and fall.
I have to — well, I won’t bore you with my to dos —
let’s just say I already have enough futile flailings
to attend that I don’t need to add raking to my list.
And so my yard is full of leaves — let me be clear —
not because I didn’t have time to rake, or I didn’t
buy a rake, or I had planned to rake and was kept
from my task by some circumstantial emergency.

I’ve chosen to let my lawn be a sanctuary for the
fallen, a place for leaves to land and stay for as
long as they like. If I do gather them at all, it
will be to make a big pile for the purpose of
doing my best Snoopy impression, shuffling
through the stack, my head kicked back in glee,
until all the leaves are scattered once more
across the yard. Then I will wave to my
neighbor as he rakes, and go inside, grateful.

Peace,
Milton

still on the line

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

On our trip to Texas, we stopped for coffee somewhere south of Waco and, along with our beverages, we picked up James Taylor’s new CD, Covers, to give us a break from the radio. As I said earlier this week, my life is a movie in search of a soundtrack. A couple of cuts in, I could feel something change inside me as he began to sing, “I am a lineman for the county.” I have loved “Wichita Lineman” since I first heard Glen Campbell sing it on a record my parents had, to when I learned Jimmy Webb wrote it, to when I heard Jimmy Webb sing it, and on down until JT’s soft, well-weathered voice carried the words and music as we drove up that Texas highway last week.

The BBC said it was No. 87 of the Top 100 Songs and Rolling Stone put it at No. 187 of it’s Top 500 Songs of All Time, right after “Free Bird,” which makes for an interesting juxtaposition. Here are the lyrics:

I am a lineman for the county.
and I drive the main road
searching in the sun for another overload

I hear you singing in the wire
I can hear you thru the whine
and the Wichita lineman is still on the line

I know I need a small vacation
but it don’t look like rain
and if it snows that stretch down south
won’t ever stand the strain

and I need you more than want you
and I want you for all time
and the Wichita lineman is still on the line

From my earliest memories, the song is tied to “Gentle on my Mind,” which was on the same record. Both of them are unusual love songs, I suppose, and I sang along heartily even though I had no idea what he was singing about, other than I liked the word pictures of

moving down the back roads by the rivers of my memory
and for hours your just gentle on my mind

As I have heard “Wichita Lineman” over the years, I’ve come to see it as a tenacious love song. Here’s a guy who is dutifully doing what he thinks needs to be done and, even in the midst of his hard work, love comes singing to find him. The lines that kill me are

and I need you more than want you
and I want you for all time
and the Wichita Lineman is still on the line

Ginger and I talked again today about how our work schedules – OK, mostly mine, since I work five nights a week, and this week, six – keep us from eating dinner together or being able to get out and do much. Maybe the song hits because I feel like the Bull City Line Cook who is still on a line of his own. Most any afternoon, one of us calls the other and says something like, “I just missed you and wanted to say, ‘Hi’.” Even though the phones have nothing to do with lines anymore, I can still hear her heart sing. However the equation of need and want plays out, what I understand almost twenty years on is the tenacity of love is not about hanging on, or hanging in there, but about diligently boring into one another’s beings and determinedly tightening the bonds between us, regardless of schedules and duties and whatever else life may hold. Whether all has been said and done, or there is still much to do and say, we are together.

And we have music to play as we go.

Peace,
Milton

on the street where I live

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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4

The opening scene of the movie, Big, (as I remember it, twenty years later) was of Josh and his friend, Billy, walking together down a tree-lined street singing,

The space goes down, down baby, down, down the roller coaster. Sweet, sweet baby, sweet, sweet, don’t let me go. Shimmy, shimmy, cocoa pop. Shimmy, shimmy, rock. Shimmy, shimmy, cocoa pop. Shimmy, shimmy, rock. I met a girlfriend – a triscuit. She said, a triscuit – a biscuit. Ice cream, soda pop, vanilla on the top. Ooh, Shelly’s out, walking down the street, ten times a week. I read it. I said it. I stole my momma’s credit. I’m cool. I’m hot. Sock me in the stomach three more times.

OK, I didn’t remember their song; I found it here. But I do remember the street, lined with giant trees in their full autumn regalia, looking about as American as it gets. For a long time I wondered where those streets were, then I moved to Boston and found those streets, but I never got to live on one of them.

Until now.

Here is what our street looked like this morning when I turned to the left


and to the right.


Yup. I’m cool. I’m hot. I’m fortunate. Sock me in the stomach three more times.

Peace,
Milton

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